Latest / CASTLcast / 8 | No Pilgrimage Unchanged - with Dr. Alexander Schimpf

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8 | No Pilgrimage Unchanged - with Dr. Alexander Schimpf · CASTLcast

• Jake: All right. Welcome back to another episode of Castle Cast, Rhino Radio as they call it. I'm here again with our esteemed headmaster, Dr. Alex Schimpf. Thank you. How are you today? I'm doing well today. Thank you. Okay, good. Good. Fired up for this episode. Yeah, I hope so. seemed pretty fired up coming back from your Pilgrimage. So came back from a pilgrimage and you asked me to do an episode on pilgrimages. So this is the kind of setup I need from you as podcast host. And then ask me to do that. Cool. All right. Well, I'm excited to get into it. I have I I want to talk about the origins of Pilgrimage Weekend. Okay. I have my own kind of a theory, but I d I love to, you know, hear where where does this come from in the in the tr in the great tradition here? Okay. Right. So first just to give Some general background for those people who are not following all that we do. Here at Chesterton Academy of St. Louis, we do not have a fall break. We have instead a pilgrimage weekend. And some jaded individuals who will not be named have suggested to me this is just in keeping with my usual practice of giving everything a different name. So it's really fall break, right? no, I don't. It actually is pilgrimage weekend. So the name has meaning. so what that is, it would coincide perhaps with the range of time that might normally be a fall break. It's a Thursday through a Sunday. And we ask our families to go on a pilgrimage somewhere. And it's optional. No one's punished if they don't. But if they do, and the students take a picture at the holy site, or if they're really opposed to photography or iconography or whatever it is, they could write me a re a reflection on the experience. And then we give them a merit point, which doesn't sound like much, but I have found that's all the inducement needed to get people to actually do this. Yeah. And I understand it as a parent. Because as a parent there's certain things I would like to do, but I need an excuse to do them because I know it's gonna be a fight. The good is always a fight. So it's helpful to be able to say, Well, mm, I r I hear you that you would like to spend your fall break drinking Mountain Dew and playing gate video games for four days. But all shucks, that Dr. Schimf says we gotta go on a pilgrimage. So we're just gonna do a family road trip to this holy shrine and we're gonna pray a rosary on the way there, and we're gonna attend Mass. We're gonna spend some time in nature and have a Nice meals of family and come home. Wash what am I gonna do? That's what Dr. Schimp wants. And then of course the high schoolers are also wildly competitive. So any way to pick up merit points is carefully attended to. So those are the origins of pilgrimage weekend. And the first time we did it. I'll admit there's a certain degree of self-interest in this because a big part of my spirituality in recent years has been the Three Hearts pilgrimage in Oklahoma. So when I took this job, I wanted to make sure I could still make that pilgrimage. And it was important for my sons. We were asking them to move from what they knew in Oklahoma to here in St. Louis. I was surprised that one of the few questions they asked me. Is will we still be able to go back for the Three Hearts pilgrimage? Wow. So I asked the board if we could go ahead and build in a pilgrimage weekend, and they were fine with it. And then after that first one, one of the board members admitted to me that she had been a little skeptical about this idea. This was just a Dr. Shimp thing, but it turned out it was just what her family needed. wow. So I got a lot of positive feedback saying, thank you for inviting us to put Christ back into the center of what would otherwise Some time off, some needed time off, but still that this was good. And so it's been there ever since. Yeah, yeah. Well that's I I feel vindicated because I sort of just was imagining, you know, you know, okay, Dr. Schimpf is coming on board. We want him as the headmaster here, the founding headmaster of Chetford Academy of St. Louis. And his like one requirement is that he still gets to go on the three hearts pilgrimage. And and we're just discussing a couple of weeks ago, overcoming requirements. Right. And I was just, fantasizing on that discussion of, you know what, instead of just saying yes, we'll just make this a pilgrimage weekend for the whole school. That's right. They overcame my requirements. Yes. But I do think it's a legitimate question, first of all, because it's not something you see in the calendar of other schools. What is this pilgrimage weekend? Right. Nonsense. and there are more objections possible. You know I love to do this. Whatever our topic is, we're gonna immediately destroy it from the start. So yeah. So you could ask, first of all, does this belong in a busy academic calendar? Maybe a controversial statement, but as you know, there aren't a lot of schools out there that do daily mass. And they explain that as we don't have enough time. We can't get everything done in the curriculum if we have mass every day. And thank you for giving me that skeptical look. You that doesn't come through on the airwaves and he arched an eyebrow at me. And I feel the same way. That's why we have daily mass here. But a similar argument could be made for pilgrimage weekend. Do you really need a a pilgrimage? Like we get it. You guys are Catholic. You don't have to keep touting the the full throttle Catholicism from a different episode. So enough of the pilgrimage weekend nonsense. and you might say it's a little bit for you to need by extension to do A podcast about not just your pilgrimage weekend, but if we talk about pilgrimage generally, you guys are a little bit outside of your lane. Like talk about school stuff. We don't need you to talk about everything in the world. We don't need a bowling episode and a breadmaking episode, a pilgrimage episode. We could also object to it from more the standpoint of rhetoric. You just wrapped up the sophomore play. And as we were discussing, that means that aspect of your job is about to change a little bit. There's no more sets to build. Because at this point, the sophomores, having completed their play, turn to a class on rhetoric and debate. Right. And one of the three foundational ideas of rhetoric, of being persuasive, is what's called ethos. And that is The character of the speaker. Are you the kind of person to whom I should listen to on this particular topic? So even if there's a listener out there saying, fine, pilgrimage weekend, Catholic identity, why YouTube Bozos? What enables Mr. Jacob Ison and Dr. Schimf to hold forth on the subject of pilgrimage? That was just question. Another just question. And then a a final question, this might be the really spicy one. And I I'll have to get you to counterbalance this because you are a man of good cheer, always with a smile. But I'm a philosopher, so we're dark and jaded. And so sometimes when I open up my parish Bolton and I see some pilgrimage advertised, it's we're gonna go tour the holy sites of Scotland and hit every single distillery on the island while we're at it, there is a part of me that thinks, hmm. How aesthetical is this? Yeah, so is this truly a holy trip, or is this more of a fancy vacation, but you felt guilty, so you gave it a little Catholic overlay. So in all these ways, there are possible objections to pilgrimage weekend, us talking about pilgrimage, or cath or pilgrimage just in general. Yeah. So this can be a controversial episode. I hope so. I hope so. So let's start it off with you though. What pilgrimages have you been on? I guess many in my in my lifetime. Okay. you know, from pilgrimages to Rome to an unintentional one to Ireland that was very formative. I did not hit every distillery you know that there was. I'm more interested in the unintentional part, but we'll we'll circle back, complete your list and then we'll we'll hit the highlights. Yeah. And then no, I mean obviously many. beautiful holy sites here in the United States. From the grotto at Notre Dame to this giant statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Ohio. It's like, you know, sixty feet tall. Pretty awesome. So there's this there's so many, so many. And I did go on a pilgrimage during pilgrimage weekends. where'd you go? I went to the Shrine of the Holy Family out in Wentzville. it was scheduled long before I came on board at Chesterton to do our father-son camp out that weekend. And so I said, well, because I'm gonna overcome the requirement. yeah, we're gonna go ahead and have our father son camp out at the shrine of the holy family. Excellent. And it worked out beautifully. Good. Good. you can keep your job, man. You fulfill the requirement. Good news, this episode has already in already become a comedy. Yeah, I was trying to compile my list to you. my first pilgrimage would have been a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France. Beautiful. And then I went on a lot of pilgrimages that weren't necessarily my choice. I don't know that they're unintentional is the word I would have used, but I was in formation for a while discerning the priesthood. I was in a religious order. And they would tell you you were going on a pilgrimage. we're taking a pilgrimage group to Fatima and you're going along. And I'm not mocking that because it There is a certain way in which to do that job, and I know that's the wrong word, but that vocation, you need down the line, you are going to need to accompany pilgrimages and be a chaplain. So you need to be aware of these sites. You need to go on them to know, to see how priests conduct themselves on these. So those kind of forced yet happy pilgrimages. I went to Rome several times, Fatimon, Spain, Poland. So I got to see a lot of great stuff that way. And then eventually then local pilgrimages, holy s shrines in America. But the biggest one for me recently has been the Three Hearts Pilgrimage in Oklahoma that ends at Clear Creek Abbey, out in the sticks in eastern Oklahoma. And then of course, last year we our senior students take a most of our senior students take a pilgrimage to Italy as a capstone of their time there. And I accompanied them on that. So again, in a way it wasn't my pilgrimage. It was their pilgrimage, but I had to go and be in charge. So that's an interesting question too, is what w can you still get the good fruit from a pilgrimage that you maybe necessarily didn't choose to go on. Something we can discuss, I'm sure. Sure. Yeah. So I guess maybe maybe step back and what defines a pilgrimage? Is it really a pilgrimage? What well what what is a pilgrimage, as you're as we're kinda laying this all out for folks? Right. Cause people do ask me this when they're trying to figure out what can I get a merit for on pilgrimage weekend. So loosely a pilgrimage is a devotional trip to a holy site. So you're you are going there out of love for God in order to pray. That's the loose definition. But I do think in this case It's helpful to remember the origins of things because even though s the meaning of a word can change, that place that it came from always gives it a certain color or shape. So I think a lot of the times why we react a certain way to pilgrimages that look too fun or too luxurious is where it began was a more penitential thing in the early church as I understand it. So first of all, you would make a pilgrimage To the either the spot where a martyr died or to where the martyr's bones were kept, perhaps perhaps to celebrate Mass there. And that in and of itself could be dangerous for you. So there was an element of danger to it. And then very early in the life of the church, a pilgrimage was accepted as an appropriately penitential act to atone for sins. If you did something really egregious, like insult your headmaster, you know, the the penance might be will go on a barefoot pilgrimage. to such and such shrine and that atoned for it. So I think we have a deep memory as Catholics of pilgrimage being somewhat penitential. Yeah. Doesn't mean it has to be as miserable as possible or miserable in every single way. Right. But the very idea of it, it is travel to a spot to which you normally don't go. And travel always involves inconveniences and probably an expense of some sort. Yeah. So I think we have that lingering memory. So but here, trip to a holy site to pray. And if it involves a little something else to offer up to God, all to the better. Nice, nice. I like that. Yeah, we just finished up Dante's Inferno and Junior Literature. Okay. And so they're busy writing their their essays, reflecting on some aspect of of the book before we move on to the Purgatorio. And and one of the students wanted to highlight the fact kind of there's Dante the poet who's writing the whole divine comedy. Right. But he's writing about Dante the pilgrim, who is the one who experiences this adventure through hell and purgatory and and finally paradise. And and his point in in the essay that he was writing, when he told me what he was gonna write about, it was the fact that, you should not come back from a pilgrimage unchanged. Mm. And you know, I thought that was kind of pointed for our discussion today. And, you know, okay, could go on some trip, and if it doesn't start with the right intentions, it's kind of very likely that you will not come back a changed person. Which is to some extent the whole goal. I mean, even if you're saying like the places to go to the point is to go to a holy place where you will, you know, pray right with yourself in the in the presence of your Lord and you know, hopefully with your family, that that there's something about that that will change you. Right. Any contact with the divine should always change us. so that was kind of interesting element to think about, with regards to you know What makes a pilgrimage a pilgrimage? I like that. I think that's how you could distinguish a pilgrimage from, say, Catholic travel. Mm-hmm. Because as a Catholic, you would naturally be curious about any holy sites in the area to which you're going. And as a Catholic, as you mentioned, we're always supposed to be drawing closer to God. So prayer and works of devotion should never be separate from what you're doing. But a pilgrimage. Would seem to be travel with a point. And again, I think this is where it began in the church that you had, as you said, an intention for a pilgrimage. I'm going on this pilgrimage to atone for my sins, or I'm going on this pilgrimage to ask God for this particular favor. As opposed to just Catholic travel, where if I'm in the vicinity of what's known to be a beautiful church, I'm naturally gonna want to stop in, visit our Lord, and pray there. That's not quite a pilgrimage though, is it? You need That intentionality. And I think your students' great insight is we tend not to change unless we have that intentionality somehow. Of course, St. Aristotle says it best. It's a hilarious joke. The listeners are laughing. We'll stop for the laughter right now. But he says men tend to hit only what they aim at. Thank you, Captain Obvious. But it is brilliant, right? That we, if you have an intention, that assist you in having good fruit from the experience somehow. And as I was reflecting on my pilgrimages, I think that tracks the pilgrimage I got the most out of was the first one I ever did, Pilgrimage to the Lord. Now I was probably in the spiritually worst place I would have been in for any of the pilgrimages I've gone on. I was a young man, definitely in that that purgative stage of the spiritual life where I'm actively combating serious sin. So that you would think, okay, that wouldn't have borne fruit. But I went with a very clear intention. I wanted to pray for my mother's healing from cancer. And I didn't get that particular. intention given to me, answered as I had stated it, but I got something greater. And that my mother, who had never been a Christian, got baptized before she died. And I attribute it to that pilgrimage. So God healed her. He didn't choose to heal her of the cancer, but he gave her the greater healing of baptism. Yeah. So again, even in my sort of rough spiritual state, the fact that I had an intention allowed me to then see how God reacted to that, what he did in response to my pilgrimage. And that then led to a change in me, because that for me was an overwhelming experience of the goodness of God that, even though I was kind of a dirtbag when I went on that pilgrimage, you still paid attention and you not only answered my prayer, but answered it in a superior way. And it's that was powerful for me. Yeah. And I contrast that to a lot of the other pilgrimages I went on as a, priest in training or religious. Great experiences, lots of prayer. I don't I think they they didn't hurt my spiritual life, but I can't as easily point to a fruit from them because I didn't really go with an intention. I went out of holy obedience, the superior told me I'm going. I'm like, Okay, I'll go. So nothing bad there, but also no big payoff. So I think that's a good point you're s that would connect or complement your students inside is you're supposed to come back changed and in order to come back changed, you need to be going for a purpose. You need to realize why you're going. Sure. I think this sometimes sometimes the the fruit of the pilgrimage will not be what you expected or what you were trying to get out of. no. In fact I'd say that's almost The norm. When I read the gospels, I'm always entertained by the way people will ask our Lord a question and he answers with whatever he wants. He does not feel bound by the terms of their question. Right. And good. That's all to the good for us because he's smarter. He really knows what needs to be said in the scenario. And I'm so I'm glad he doesn't feel he has to be polite when we say nonsensical things. In the same way, my pilgrimage intention may be objectively stupid. in the grand heavenly scheme of things, but that's okay. Cause he can work with that. Yeah. But I think this is this even applies to retreats as well. Back when I used to lead a lot of retreats, an initial segment we like to do with every retreat is ask the retreatans, what fruit are you hoping for from this retreat? And some people had beautiful things to say. Some people had a look of sheer panic, because they clearly hadn't thought of that at all. But it was a great exercise to make them at the beginning of the treats start thinking about this. What do you want? What do you want to get out of this? Because that's the only way you'll be able to recognize then the action of God in your life, positively or negatively. At the end you could say, Well, I didn't get what I wanted. What does this mean? Or you can say, God did answer that in some way. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Got answered a a question that I didn't even know I was asking. Right. Yeah. So I've talked a lot about me, but how about you? You've been on all these retreats. One unintentional to Ireland. We still haven't delved into that. Are you able to point to a particular change in you from one of those retreats? Absolutely. I mean, I I'm I could probably go to any of them and point to something. but I'll just stick with the one from this past. pilgrimage weekend. sorry, I wanted I wanted to I wanted to be a pilgrimage. I knew there would be some sacrifices. And yeah, God God chose that weekend to remind me hey, stop being such a Martha all the time, maybe you could be a little bit more like Mary and you know, don't be such an activist and you know, prioritize okay. Prioritize sometimes just some contemplation and So I was it was like yeah, I didn't I didn't like the way that I received the message, but I was appreciative of the receiving the message in general. Okay. So yeah, absolutely. I think I d I d I definitely agree with what you've you know put out that if we are approaching it with the hopes of receiving something, God will give it to us. Right. And the something should be more than a merit point from Dr. Schimpf. Yeah, absolutely. So I think it belongs then at our school, as you said, both 'cause there are curricular connections, you have Dante is a pilgrim, although that's a weird thought. Can you make a pilgrimage to hell? Let's leave that aside. Certainly you can make a pilgrimage to heaven and his movement, there's an ultimate movement to a holy place. He just has to pass through a bad place first. And I passed through some bad places psychologically on the Three Hearts pilgrimage while walking a marathon on the first day. But then it also connects the curriculum in other ways. the Inferno would actually not be what I would typically think if you said our curriculum pilgrimage, I would think of the Canterbury Tales. Right. Which is Sure. them entertaining each other, telling stories as part of this pilgrimage. And then I mentioned the senior year pilgrimage we want our students to go on. And I think it's very important if we want that to actually be a pilgrimage and not just travel to Europe like a prestigious private school student, but an actual pilgrimage, then there need to be little pilgrimages before that. You learn to do pilgrimage by going on pilgrimage. And that obviously is going to be a pilgrimage. We want to have a big payoff. They're paying a lot of money to go. They have to work hard to raise that money. They're going to be at amazing, beautiful, holy sites in Italy. So we need to train for that somehow. So that's the other connection of pilgrimage weekend is start doing it in these low key ways so you can be more ready for that. So you realize what is compatible with it and what is incompatible with it. Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes sense. and I also think about the communal aspect of a pilgrimage, especially, you know, Chesterton being sort of like this extended community. once we know somebody is going on a pilgrimage and we know that there's like some fruit that they're hoping to get out of it, you know, it's natural for us as Catholics to then pray for them. and and so it's definitely with our seniors, Taking the game here. We're praying for the seniors. We're we're keeping them in mind. People are supporting their fundraising efforts. They're they're realizing what great fruits could come from going to the heart of the church, experiencing, you know, where the Pope is and with the blood of the martyrs and the the two millennia of of Catholic, you know, influence on the world. And, you know, realizing what what a gift it will be for their own faith. And and then it becomes a a communal project, so to speak. I think, too, when we we we talk about pilgrimage weekend, we talk about, hey, well, where you gonna go and what have you. And some of them are working into, I really want to go visit this college. And so we're gonna go to this shrine that's near this college. And hey, okay. but then you you're keeping that in mind. hey, they're gonna go here and hopefully God will bring something good from this. Yes, I think that's a great topic that we can probably spend the rest of the podcast delving into this communal aspect of the pilgrimage. And again, it's a testimony to your goodness of heart. To you, that means, I have to be praying for you. Selfish, Dr. Schimpf, it's quite the opposite. No, let me give you my prayer intentions that you're going to take to Rome and pray for it, all the holy places. Like you, you have a responsibility as the pilgrim to carry me since you're going to be over there. Well, absolutely. That's a that's a a huge aspect of it. But that is the question: is is a pilgrimage necessarily communal? Or is is an individual pilgrimage as good as as a communal one? I know for me, sometimes the communal aspect of a pilgrimage is the toughest part. If if you ask my My eighth grade son, he got a lot of entertainment about my designation as the medic for our chapter in the Three Hearts pilgrimage, because I just wanna walk and pray and not talk. This is my plan for my pilgrimage. But a medic has to interact with people. You might have to land someone's blister. You have all these jobs to do. People are telling you their problems. It's kind of a nightmare scenario for me. So I immediately saw the finger of God in that. He's like, the walking's not gonna be that bad for you. You're gonna whine, you're gonna complain, but you can do this. But having to interact with everyone, that's gonna be a cross. So here you go. And the school had set me up for it perfectly because we had all just gotten certified and CPR as as faculty members here. So when they Asked, are any of you gentlemen willing to serve as medic, or any of you happen to be CPR trained? There was no honorable answer, but yes. Added a little extra weight to my backpack. So the communal aspects of the pilgrimage do. I think enhance it. Again, there's such a thing as a solitary pilgrimage, especially if it's a penitential pilgrimage. But on the whole, I think most pilgrimages throughout our history have been communal affairs because it's travel, it's difficult. We as humans typically need help. So pilgrimage, a bit like a retreat, is something you will typically do with others. You can do an individual retreat, you can do an individual pilgrimage, but on the whole it's usually a group effort. Yeah. Yeah. I think God uses that. he he I kind of expects that. And and as you you're quoting some of the greats here and I think Aquinas says that, you know, in theory you should be able to get to heaven alone, but practically you need friends to do so. And I just you know, we kinda need to bump up against other humans and we need these other humans that that care about us and are willy and are good. And and way that God designed us as these social political creatures. Right. he he's like, okay, this is this is part of the design. Okay. I had a question too, a little bit of a different angle on this, but I wanted to ask you, yeah. So pilgrimage actually isn't a Catholic thing, it's just a human thing. Right? Islam has a pilgrimage to Mecca, there are pilgrimages in Buddhism. So it got me thinking about this, if it's just a human thing, why though, what gets adjusted for us? Because my my sense is Catholic Christianity preserves and perfects what is true according to nature. So if you have this natural human phenomenon of the pilgrimage, what difference does Christianity make to it? What's different about a Catholic pilgrimage compared to other pilgrimages? Well, I interested in your thoughts here, but I'm gonna start with Grace. Okay. Say more. And the fact that the It's almost like a sacramental in the sense of you know God has willed that specific actions you know impart grace to us. and of course we have the sacraments, very specific vehicles of of God's grace. but then then we have this whole tradition of the church in that there are sacramentals which which also impart grace. And there's something about being human, physical, creatures made of flesh and blood, that that have all the the attributes of animals, we move around, we have to do things, we have to eat, we have to you know live life that we can you know attach to these activities impositions of grace, okay which are Just as as the word would suggest, gratuitous gifts from God. Right. No, I think that's an important point. And the the church throughout her history. has liked to indulgence pilgrimages. If we're gonna talk about full throttle Catholicism again. At the end of the Three Hearts Pilgrimage, for example, the abbot got up and read a letter he had received from the the church's, what's the word, the apostolic penitentiary. It has some awesome name, but they're the people who oversee indulgences for the church. And at the request of a cardinal they had granted the Three Hearts Pilgrimage. you could receive a plenary indulgence for doing that work as long as all the other conditions were met of prayer for the Holy Father, detachment from sin, sacramental confession and communion. So yeah, I'd That was your initial answer, but it's a pretty good one that for other humans can go on pilgrimages, and that think they would have a certain natural value if it's going to a place that's been significant in your life that might refresh some memories that strengthen your identity. If you're going to a new place that would broaden your experiences, deepen you as a human being. But for us, there's not merely a natural benefit, but there can be a supernatural benefit that it can move us closer to God while we're moving on this pilgrimage. are moving deeper into our friendship with God if we're rightly disposed. So that possibility, much more can be attained through a Christian pilgrimage that can be obtained through a different sort of pilgrimage. So that would be one essential difference, I think. Yeah. And I think So you you mentioned the examples of Buddhism, you know, Islam, probably some of that came from the tradition of Christianity. True. but then certainly you know, even in more ancient cultures, they have like, you know, I'm gonna go visit the oracle at Delphi. So is that a pilgrimage of sorts? What did you say? I that's a hard one to answer. My interpretation of in the life of Socrates, Caraphon, his buddy, goes to the Oracle and asks the Oracle a question, but it's such an irreverent question, you wonder if it was really a pilgrimage. He asks the Oracle, Is Socrates the wisest man in Athens? okay. So does that really reveal a deeply pious mindset? I don't think so, but yeah, there are these in the ancient world for sure. And he is going to A religious site, but I think that intentionality we talked about earlier is lacking somehow. Unless this really was a burning religious question for him. The great irony though is that Socrates interprets it religiously. It's he takes this Pronouncement of the oracle that he's the wisest man in Athens very seriously, and it embarks him on what you would probably call his vocation, to question his fellow Athenians, not simply for fun or entertainment, but to be the midwife of knowledge for them, to make them realize their own ignorance and to make them realize they need to examine themselves. And that eventually this leads to his death. So that's an interesting one. Another guy's pilgrimage that I'm questioning whether it was even what he would call. qualifies a pilgrimage, nevertheless had this profound impact in someone else's life. Yeah. So well, by the fruit you shall know the tree, perhaps. Well yeah, perhaps. You're very looking very skeptical there. That may be another case of God does what he wants, right? That's true, yes. Yeah. He can definitely operate outside the bounds of anything. So I guess on that topic Socrates being the wisest in Athens. You were you were setting out earlier some you know, some rebuttals or obstacles towards, you know, us being the ones to have this deep dive on pilgrimages. Right. So I I'm just curious on your you know, can you make a case here for for us? For you and those here at Christian Academy of St. Louis. We've been on that's that's half the battle. We're we're not just speaking about something we haven't experienced. We've been on ones that were chosen for us. We have been on pilgrimages pilgrimages that were unchosen for us, and we have experienced the fruits of pilgrimage. So I think that's the probably the essential qualification. But we're able to say, each of us for our own lives, here's something that a pilgrimage did for me. And then we can rightly communicate that expectation to our families and students that you should not just go on this thing for a merit point or just to have something to do. But if you call on something good, expect the good to answer. Here's my Halloween tie-in, right? It's important with this Halloween episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We have this sense in America that there are superstitions, that there's certain things you should not do, because if you call on something bad, something bad's gonna answer. But it's funny from a Catholic perspective, because bad or evil is really a privation of a good. It's taking the fullness that would be there in something good and watering it down to a fraction of what it was. So if it is true that calling on something bad might cause something bad to answer, all the more is it the case that if you actually call on God, you go on a pilgrimage with a reasonable intention, God is going to do something. He's not going to be outdone in generosity. And he's a good teacher. He's going to take the teaching opportunity to do something. So in that sense, I think we we have enough to talk about this and get people to start thinking out of of it on their own. And we welcome their correction and further suggestions for how to develop this. But I think we're okay. Yeah. Maybe maybe though, maybe we need more research. Perhaps the board needs to send you and I on the on the Camino de Compostela. So we're just we're gonna take a few months off school, walk the Camino down to the Cathedral of St. James, and then when we come back, we're really gonna be qualified for the pilgrimage. So any board members listening, balls in your court. Yeah. Gauntlet drop. So that's that that was that objection. What were my other objections? Doesn't fit with the curriculum. I think we've addressed that. It's there both theoretically in some of these works we read, but also practically in that we go on a pilgrimage. Right. And then the final objections I had brought up, I had brought up the idea of pilgrimages as parties. We could talk about that one a little bit more because even Chesterton addresses that. And one I hadn't mentioned yet, but I suppose we could talk about if we really want to end with fire and brimstone, would be coming from a more godless modernist objection that there are no holy sites, there are no holy things. There can only be at best holy people. So we could do those. Okay. Which do you want to tackle first? Well let's end with the fire in Brimstone. So so what was the second to last one? You said the the kind of the party yeah pilgrimages or parties. Tell me about that. What do mean by that? So that's That's a very old objection to pilgrimage, actually. So Chesterton and Dr. Schimfer, as we say, tardy to the party with that one. You find you find church fathers dealing with that. And even some of the guys who loved pilgrimages, like St. Augustine or St. John Chrysostom, will then turn around. and make some pretty stern remarks about just your pilgrimage, which is nothing but travel. And there were a lot of rules eventually passed in the church, especially for monks and people who needed to have a certain kind of stability or or priests and bishops in a particular place about what the appropriate pilgrimage length was. So yes, if you're gonna go to the Holy Land, you can have a year off, but if if you're just going to Canterbury, you're you don't need to take a year off. So clearly there has always been a sense that This human thing could go awry. Even if it started as an act of penance, we humans are good at making the best of things. So again, even in your Canterbury Tales, they're going on a pilgrimage, but they're telling kind of racy stories at a certain point. Not all the pilgrims, but you know, that's the thing about this common human thing of a pilgrimage. It takes all kinds. You get all kinds there in the group. Some of them tell very proper tales, and some of them tell stuff that you don't want the kids listening to. So You could object to that. And that's what Chesterton brings up. Chesterton has a book on Chaucer. And in the course of it, he brings up this idea of the pilgrimage as a mockery of true religion. That you say you're going on this pilgrimage, but you're drinking every night and you're carousing and you're partying. And Chesterton has what I think is a really great common sense rebuttal. He says, Okay, sure. Pilgrimages can have, how's he say, riotous elements? There there can be some bad behavior, but isn't that true of any human thing? Because we have original sin. That's our default. And then he asks, are we really better off without them though? Right? Show me where you you've done away with the pilgrimages and the retreats and and all this stuff. Has the fruit been good? Yeah. No, it hasn't. So if you're gonna put them in different words, it would be. Sure, there can be excesses, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Am I only gonna allow Mr. Jacob Isen to go on a pilgrimage to Cedar Lake if he does so walking barefoot, fasting for the entire time, with only the Bible to read, and he can only say things that are wildly charitable. And those are the the only conditions under which he can make a pilgrimage? No. Let him go. They'll be imperfect elements, but God can sort that out. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that. I was thinking about what you when you were saying that. you know, fish fries are kind of a similar pilgrimage or a party. Wow. If you say I'm spicy, that you're in St. Louis. I thought you're gonna burn down the studio. And no, you know, you you can you can see how the fish fries have become parties. And at the same time as I was making this point have we lost the the aesthetical elements here with fish fries? I was getting all this pushback and all these guys are saying, like, come on, but like, wouldn't you rather have a steak than a a well fried fish? Or like, you know and it so the fact that we can make the best of of the fish fry Yeah, there's actually something really edifying about that as Catholics. And and it's still, you know, can be a very edifying thing for somebody that goes to the fish fry for the first time and you know he he sees, okay, you know, these people are having a great time with their sacrifice that they have freely taken on. no one's checking to see if they've abstained from meat. but they've they're making the best out of this. That's a a beautiful thing. So and and then to your point, okay, like if we got rid of fish fries, would we be better off? Exactly. So th I guess we're just gonna go get a steak every Friday now. Like where where's the penance? So Yeah. And then the spicier thing, and I don't know that I have a quick 10 minute rebuttal to this, but this idea that there can't be holy sites, there can't how can it help you as a free human being just to go to a place, right, where the martyr's bones are, or this this abbey, or this famous church, whatever it would be? I mean, that's almost so antithetical to our mindset, it's it's hard to even talk about because I don't know that we're gonna have common ground there. But I think you would have to dig into something like, well, you accept us on the natural level, don't you? strangely I'm thinking of country music is full of songs about the house where I grew up as a s an appropriate place of pilgrimage or the horror of daddy selling the family farm. Right? That they're No, on the natural level, you may talk a big game, but you recognize that there are some places that are more personally significant than others. So why can't why can't that be extended in grace? Why can't a place be powerful, be a place where God has intervened and would now want to meet with us? And there's just been so much good fruit to which we could point in the lives of Catholics of pilgrimages to the Holy Land that have changed people. Or again, this is more of a retreat, but it could be a pilgrimage side. When I went on a retreat at the White House Jesuit retreat here center here in St. Louis, the priest pointed out, you're standing on holy ground. So many lives have been changed here. So many men have come here and left differently. And you need to be aware of that while on retreat here. And I was very grateful for that insight. Yeah. Again, just By the numbers, maybe it's not gonna change my life, but clearly I'm in a target rich environment for God right now. And in the life of my own family, it was. My father went on retreats at the White House Jesuit Retreat Center for something like 30 straight years. And it absolutely changed him over time. And even in the short term, he was a different man four days later. The guy who went on retreat was never the guy who came back from retreats. And so if that can be true of a retreat, I think it can be true of any trip to a holy place. That it it can change you, and even if we can't give you a theoretical account that's going to satisfy you. The raw experience of humanity speaks against you. That you're not arguing against me, Dr. Shimp Catholic. You in this particular case, this is an ecumenical problem for you. That humans throughout history have gone on something like a pilgrimage. So the burden of proof is on you if you are a skeptical here. Yeah. If you are saying going to a particular place cannot be humanly or spiritually impactful. Sure. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I I definitely agree. like you said, there's all kinds of secular places where people go and are changed by virtue of going there. You know. Usually for the worst, but that's separate conversations. I don't know about that. You know, to go to the nine eleven memorial. Or you know True. True. I I refuted. Thank you. Yeah, th you're like wow, like, you know blood that was sh shed here at Gettysburg and like Lincoln said, like, you know, th this this ground is is consecrated. Right. Right. And and if you I mean you could walk there, maybe you miss all the signs, maybe you're not changed, but if you go with the intention of understanding what happened there and you make yourself present to what what happened, you you would be changed, right? So Or haunted house, if you want a negative example. That's Halloween. My second Halloween tie in. you don't want to spend the night alone in the Limp Mansion here in St. Louis. That's creepy, right? I don't know. Why can't you even Mr. Jacob Ison? So why can't there be a positive analogue to that? If you have the Limp Mansion and it's creepy, why can't there be something like the White House Jesuit Retreat? Why not? Yeah. And I like your example of Gittysburg, 'cause I'd forgotten about that, but I've been there too. And again, was just impressed with that. As a battlefield site, all the beautiful monuments there, something's gotta be a little bit humanly wrong with you not to be impacted by Gittysburg or one of these very, very well done memorials. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of impact, you shared from this like first pilgrimage weekend that the your board member saying Wow, this is exactly what the doctor ordered from my family. Any cool little stories from students having gone to pilgrimage weekend or to Rome that you really want to share? Well, yes. Our last, our school's first trip to Italy with our first set of graduating seniors as part of that trip. You go to Rome. And we went to Florence, which we're not gonna do again because that is not an appropriate pilgrimage site. That is a secular city. Sorry, all my Florentine listeners, you can send in your your anger angry remarks. Dante is also upset. I know, I know. But yeah, you gotta pay to see his tomb. Anyway, digression. But we went to his CC and one of our senior students had had quite a devotion to Saint Francis of Assisi and praying at his tomb was massively impactful and he's currently testing a vocation to the priesthood. So that's some pretty immediate fruit. And that's what I experienced. My that first pilgrimage I went on to Lord was before my senior year of high school. So roughly the same. Yeah. And again, I think our students are night and day holier than I was. I was, as we said earlier in the episode, a dirt bag. But even I remember the impact of the grotto at Lourdes. So again, this is someone who's maybe not fully committed to the Catholic faith, in and out, not sure what he thinks about it. But that was an almost tactile experience of holiness. I could sense just as a human Something is here. There is a power here. There is something strange going on here. And it's hard to pinpoint just one element. Was it the crutches stretched across the waters of all the people who got miraculous cursed? Maybe that. Was it the attitude of other people praying devoutly there? Maybe it was that. Was it the the reverence that's kind of enforced there? Maybe it was that. But it all comes together and you're struck by it. So definitely I think a lot of our students were struck by that. Now we had an interesting pilgrimage, pilgrimage curveball. If you would ask the whole group we went with, all the students from all the other Chesterton academies, what was most impactful? A whole lot of students cry with joy. They're clearly overcome. That was not our experience because we showed up at the airport and we were told, well, your flight's been canceled. And this is an actual quote we don't have a solution for you. I could not believe I was hearing that. Eventually, a solution was found, a counterintuitive solution, that rather than traveling in the direction of Italy, we were instead going to go to Colorado, spend the night in Colorado, then go to Frankfurt, and then start working our way down through Europe. But that ended up being very impactful. Because the Chesterton Academy out there surrounded us with love and hosted us. So, on the spur of the moment, with no warning, they find a way to put up all of our guy students and chaperones, all of our female students and chaperones in separate residences. They are ordering us pizza at midnight. They're hanging out with us. They are giving us food. Then the next morning, they arranged for us to get taken to mass so we can go to daily mass and then serve a Another magnificent brunch for us. And I'm a headmaster, so I know what this means. It's this was not in the schedule. Right. There was a plan for that day the next day. And it did not involve suddenly being told, your students are gonna be several hours late because they're entertaining this random group of Chesterton students. But they did it, they did it magnificently, and they did it with so much joy that I was just floored by that. That was the holiest thing I saw out of anyone through that whole pilgrimage. And I don't mean that I saw bad behavior, but again their spur the moment charity and hospitality towards us. was just amazing. So we owe that school. If they if they ever wanna do that to us, w we gotta drop everything and and try to equal their their performance. So for me that curveball, the pilgrimage curveball, was very impactful. Yeah. But for most of them it was a standard thing. I'm seeing Saint Peter's Basilica, I'm looking at the Pieta, I'm praying in the Vatican. They were crying for that reason. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, well that's a beautiful fruit and like we were saying, God sometimes gives the fruit that we're not expecting. Almost always. Well we're putting a pin in this episode here on Pilgrimage Weekend. Another great one. And be interesting to see in the future how pilgrimage weekend you know, the tradition continues to grow and we can help the students more and more to get get train them for the big pilgrimage. Right. But to get the most out of even the little pilgrimage. And and maybe another episode we could talk about, you know, the pilgrimage that is Chesterton Academy, leaving here a changed person. I like that. Yeah. But until next time, we'll see you all here on Castle Cast. Rhino Radio. And just remember, Rhinos are real. Alright.